Twin bombings near Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry kill 24

A huge explosion has been reported from Kabul just hours after twin bombing attacks rock the Afghan capital.

“The Islamic Emirate [the Taliban] condemns this action with the strongest of terms”, said Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban, in a statement issued Sunday.

An army general and two senior police commanders were among the dead, a Defence Ministry official said.

President Ashraf Ghani strongly condemned the attack.

Witnesses say the attack happened as the victims inspected the site of an earlier small blast caused by another device that had been planted on the site.

Accusing Islamabad of lying to them regarding in dealing with the Taliban, Afghanistan’s National Security Advisor Mohammad Hanif Atmar has said that Pakistan is unwilling to help Afghanistan in the peace talks with the Taliban group.

He said dozens of soldiers and officers were killed and wounded, but there was no immediate official confirmation.

The latest afternoon attack took place when two suicide bombers detonated their explosives near the gate of the ministry, which is located on a busy Kabul street, at a time when staffers were leaving for their homes.

As well as the 24 people killed, another 90 people were injured.

Afghan security personnel patrol near burned North Atlantic Treaty Organisation supply oil tankers following an overnight attack by Taliban militants in the Torkham area, near the Pakistan and Afghan border in the eastern Nangarhar province on September 16, 2014.

An Italian-run emergency hospital in Kabul tweeted that it was treating 21 injured people, four of whom died on arrival.

The Taliban on Sunday warned India against increasing military co-operation with the Afghan government and condemning it as a “clear hostility” towards the war-torn nation.

A United Nations report in July found that a record number of civilians had been killed or wounded in the first six months of 2016, since the agency began counting in 2009.